Numerous serious diseases affecting humans as well as domestic and livestock animal are caused by protozoal organisms such as kinetoplastida, apicomplexa, anaerobic protozoa, microsporidia and plasmodium. The clinically most relevant of these diseases is malaria.
Malaria is one of the most serious and complex health problems affecting humanity in the 21st century. The disease affects about 300 million people worldwide, killing 1 to 1.5 million people every year. Malaria is an infectious disease caused by four species of the protozoan parasite plasmodium, P. falciparum being the most severe of the four. All attempts to develop vaccines against P. falciparum have failed so far. Therefore, therapies and preventive measures against malaria are confined to drugs. Various classes of antimalarial drugs exist. The most widely used are the quinoline antimalarials, e.g. chloroquine which has been an especially effective drug for both prophylaxis and therapy. However, resistance to many of the currently available antimalarial drugs is spreading rapidly, threatening people in areas where malaria is endemic. Reports of multi-drug resistant strains of malaria parasites render the search for new antimalarial agents especially urgent.
P. falciparum enters the human body by way of bites of the female anophelino mosquito (it may also be transmitted by blood transfusion from asymptotic donors; almost all infected blood components including red cells, platelet concentrates, white cells, cryoprecipitates and fresh plasma can transmit malaria). The plasmodium parasite initially populates the liver, and during later stages of the infectious cycle reproduces in red blood cells. During this stage, the parasite degrades hemoglobin and uses the degradation products as nutrients for growth. The limitations of the current antiprotozoal chemotherapeutic arsenal underscore the need for new drugs in this therapeutic area. The present invention relates to the identification of novel low molecular weight, non-peptidic, non-quinoline compounds of formula I which are useful in the treatment and/or prevention of protozoal infections, especially in the treatment and/or prevention of malaria, in particular plasmodium falciparum malaria.